20th January 2011 Archive

AMD took direct aim at Intel's low-power Atom embedded processor and platform on Wednesday with the release of its G-Series Fusion APUs (accelerated processing units), the follow-ons to AMD's recently released C-Series and E-Series APUs for the notebook, netbook, and tablet markets.

HTC took the lion’s share of the recent Windows Phone 7 launch with three out of seven handsets. Without the big screen of the HD7 or the 8Mp camera of the Mozart, the Trophy looks on paper like the runt of the litter. But its lower price and still impressive spec mean it could end up in more pockets than either of its brothers

The Government has restated its plans to extend the right to request flexible working to all employees. Rather than resist the change, though, employers could see it as a chance to help deal with another issue – the removal of the retirement age.

Kenneth Clark's Civilisation was a genuine television event when it was first broadcast in 1969. Thanks to restoration work carried out on the more than 40-year-old film stock it may be about to repeat its success.

Nokia's new Canadian CEO Stephen Elop hasn't been able to work his magic just yet. A deal to market a smartphone exclusively via the largest US network AT&T has been scrapped at the 11th hour, according to reports.

Apple and Nokia continue to slap each others' cheeks. The iPhone maker has landed the latest blow: a lawsuit filed with the High Court in London this week that seeks to have one of the Finns' patents rendered null and void.

The future of EMC's VNX line, currently a work in progress, is presaged by this week's launch of the VNXe - a more integrated system with a new operating system, VNOX, and very much simpler set up, provisioning, management and support facilities than the CLARiiON and Celerra source technologies.

Apart from the silver-on-red “V” sticker, Buffalo's V-Series Linkstation Pro appears identical to the original LinkStation Duo Nas box. Even on the inside there are many similarities, such as Buffalo’s remote WebAccess, DLNA and iTunes DAAP media streaming along with a BitTorrent client and are standard. Likewise, the V-Series box comes complete with RAID 0 and RAID 1 support, not to mention the identical on-board system software.

NASA has announced that a small "nano-satellite" which was supposed to be released from a larger spacecraft in orbit on 6 December has finally separated from its mothership. The space agency is appealing for help from ham radio enthusiasts in picking up signals from the little NanoSail-D.

There's an old adage in news journalism: news isn't necessarily what has just happened, but what readers haven't yet heard has happened. We were pointed in the direction of this story today, only to find it actually broke months ago. What the heck. It tickled us. Maybe it will tickle you.

Activision has lashed out at a fan-made massive multiplayer online (MMO) game in development called World of StarCraft. YouTube has removed a video of the game mod's work in progress after the StarCraft II publisher claimed the clip infringed its copyright.

Microsoft's mandatory Xbox 360 update, issued yesterday, was described by the company as a fix for a known bug. It turns out that it also combats gamers who own illicit copies of Call of Duty: Black Ops and other games.

You know you're watching in a lively business when forecasts look dated as soon as they appear. Yesterday BP revealed its crystal ball-gazing exercise of forecasts for energy supply and demand to 2030.

Apple has a long history of playing cat and mouse with software coders who seek to make its iOS operating system more accessible to their fellow geeks. Now the game is being played with hardware hackers.

The backstory to DC Universe Online reads like that of so many of Metropolis and Gotham City's superheroes and supervillains. Lift the cape and pull back the mask and DCUO reveals itself as a regular-Joe action-brawler that gained special powers after falling into a vat of MMORPG mutagen.

It has become a habit of IBM to brag about how much market share its Power Systems servers are taking away from Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, and Fujitsu as it closes out each quarter, and the fourth quarter was no exception for Big Blue.

The US Department of the Navy is slashing server spending as of last week, with Vice Admiral David Dorsett, deputy chief of naval operations for information dominance (how's that for a title?), issuing a directive for all IT operations to get their act together and start virtualizing and consolidating servers and data centers to reduce costs and improve efficiencies.

Wall Street has been driving up the stock in networking equipment provider F5 Networks in recent months, but after the company reported its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2011 on Wednesday, investors let some of the air out of its stock on Thursday because the company missed Wall Street's – but not its own – targets.

As much as half of the secret documents posted by WikiLeaks may have been siphoned from peer-to-peer users who incorrectly configured their file-sharing software, according to evidence gathered by a security firm.

The US Federal Aviation Administration is warning pilots to expect “unreliable or unavailable” signals from their global positioning gear as a result unspecified tests being carried out by the Department of Defense.

AMD announced its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2010 on Thursday. The numbers were essentially flat as the Intel competitor navigated through the end of a year during which it positioned itself for what it hopes will be a more successful 2011.